The struggle of the working class is linked to the revolution in three ways. First, the struggle is located where capital gets its power – in the workplace. Second, the struggle over wages and conditions shows that economic crises are inevitable within capitalism and the looming threat of an irresolvable crisis is ever growing. And third, it is only through struggle that the working class will learn the iron solidarity necessary for revolution. As it casts aside all reactionary prejudices (what Marx called “the muck of ages”), the working class will remake itself as a body of free and equal people fit for a libertarian communist society. read full story / add a comment

A review of the nature of the State as understood by anarchists, especially as proposed by the tendency called "post-anarchism." This is done through a review of the opinions of Saul Newman, a leading proponent of post-anarchism, in his work, "Anarchism, Marxism, and the Bonapartist State." The post-anarchist view is opposed by the class theory of the state, versions of which are raised by traditional, revolutionary anarchists and by Marx.read full story / add a comment

In order to understand government politics, it is necessary to have a theory of the state. The essay reviews classical anarchist and Marxist views of the class-based, pro-capitalist, nature of the state. But there are also non-class and non-capitalist influences on the state. These need to be integrated into a class theory of the state. read full story / add a comment

The context we now exist in is one that is defined by glaring contradictions everywhere, its
fractured, changing, unstable and confrontational. It is a time of despair, but also pockets of
hope.
On the one hand, a spectre is haunting us, but it is not the one that Marx spoke of. Rather an
authoritarian and extreme right wing form of capitalism, last seen on extensive scale in the
1930s, is rearing its hideous ghost-like head.
This right wing extremism has become an ‘acceptable’ form of politics amongst some people
in the context of the unresolved capitalist crisis. It is the ‘solution’ amongst sections of ruling
classes in many countries to a crisis that is not going away. As part of this, many states are
passing laws attacking basic rights that oppressed classes have won through decades and
even centuries of struggle (including in South Africa); states are beginning to bare their teeth
more often rather than being in a position to rule by consent; toxic nationalisms based on
exclusionary racial, ethnic and religious identities (including within sections of the population
in South Africa) have once again become acceptable and even embraced by sections of the
population (giving rise to the likes of Trump, Le Pen and Duterte and xenophobia and other
ills in South Africa); and bigotry and hate are back.
Yet there is also hope. In many parts of the world, sections of the working class have fought
back. This has seen movements of protests in some parts, attempts to revive unions in
others and in some cases the re-emergence of left political parties and projects. But it is also
a restructured working class, a working class that is fundamentally different from even the
1970s. New or different forms of organising happen next to the old. It is thus also a working
class in which the past weighs like a nightmare on the present in organisational terms;
experimenting with the new and different ways of organising, but also falling back into the
old. read full story / add a comment